On Hank 3's current tour, he's presenting marathon shows that cover (almost) all of his musical interests. (Courtesy of Adrenaline PR)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Many a young musician has been torn between tradition and the urge to do his own thing. Many a young musician has started out by wanting to have it all.

Few have matched the sheer stubborn defiance of Shelton Hank Williams, better known as Hank 3, in never letting go of that unreasonable desire.

The grandson of country music pioneer Hank Williams Sr. and the son of country icon Hank Williams Jr., he’s always had the option of enjoying a float down the Nashville mainstream. But he’s years past the point where most people in his position would have either settled into the family tradition or rejected it entirely, and he still refuses to settle.

In fact, when he rolls into Mobile’s Soul Kitchen Music Hall on Sunday, March 4, he’ll be hellbent on giving listeners the full measure of his latest and greatest act of rebellion.

Last September, Williams committed the supremely impractical act of releasing four albums’ worth of material on the same day: “Ghost to Ghost/Gutter Town” is a double album rooted in classic country and Cajun sounds, albeit with plenty of high-energy outlaw attitude (a strain Williams sometimes refers to as “hellbilly”) and non-country guests such as Les Claypool and Tom Waits; “Attention Deficit Domination” is a disc of sludgy doom metal; and “3 Bar Ranch Cattle Callin’” a set that one reviewer described as “an unholy alliance between death metal, cowpunk, grindcore and thrash, all spewed singlehandedly by Hank III with dizzying sprays of cattle auctioneering overtop.”

You might think that, having released this massive bolus of material all at once, Williams might do the sensible thing and pare it down for the tour — that is, either to do separate tours focusing on specific genres, or to boil it down to an eclectic best-of set.

Nope.

Just in case anybody still hadn’t gotten the message that he was never going to settle for whatever, he didn’t settle for that.

Williams is bringing it all to town, and shoehorning it into an extravagant, nearly nonstop marathon of music.

“It’s just a long show, it’s a lot of different styles,” he said. “But I always pay respects to the country part of my show, which is very high-energy, for the first hour, hour and a half.”

“As the night goes on ... then I get into this sound that’s called the hellbilly sound,” he said. “That’s like half an hour. Then we take a five-minute break, and I come out with doom rock, which is Attention Deficit Domination, and then I end the night, if anyone is still standing out there, we’re usually down to about 50 people by then, with my 3 Bar Ranch project.

“So it’s about a three and a half hour show,” he said. “It’s a long one. But I try to give everybody their money’s worth.”

In a way, even though he’s been going his own way for a long time now, it’s as if Williams has been set free. His massive September release followed the end of a long, unhappy, lawyer-intensive relationship with Curb Records.

“It’s definitely a new beginning for me on a creative level, and for my fans,” he said. “A lot of people have written about how different I can be, but nobody’s really gotten to grasp how diverse of a musician or how many voices I can put out there until these releases.”

Hank 3 in concert

9 p.m. Sunday, March 4, at Soul Kitchen Music Hall, 219 Dauphin St. 18 and up.

“Just compare me to Hank Jr. real quick,” he said. “All right, he’s got out over 115 records. Now, if you look at me, how much I’ve been held back, for being in the game for 20 years and I barely have eight or nine? Yeah. That ain’t right.

“That’s why I’ve let people record my shows, bootleg my shows,” he said. “To have some history left behind, whenever my day comes.”

“The last angle is that in 18, 19 years I’ve never been able to sell my own CD at my own show, because I refuse to sell Curb Records products,” Williams said. “Now, I get to sell my own CDs, give ‘em a chance to see every style of music I’m doing, and a chance to buy that style also.”

Williams said he knows perfectly well that not everybody is going to be on board for everything he plays, or for the amount of time it takes to play it.

“Always, usually, I lose half of the show for the rock,” he said. “That’s what makes it independent, that’s what makes it punk rock.”

And yet, he said, old-timers and “hard-core cowboys” often are among those who stick around for the last note.

“I always do my show and say hello,” he said. “And a lot of people are standing around waiting to shake my hand and say thanks for, A, letting me talk to you, and letting me feel a part of what you do.”

That’s a big deal to Hank 3. That’s part of what country means to him.

“Most people do their shows and get the hell out, and don’t even care about the fans,” he said. “And I’ve always gone back to the way it was supposed to be done, which is, we’re playing for the working man and the working woman, keepin’ my ticket prices low and affordable, where they can buy a beer, buy a T-shirt, hopefully have 20 bucks left over at the end of the night and shake my hand. That’s my view of the old country way.”

And if it’s a little chaotic, well, he’ll settle for that.

“There’s a lot of different moods that come across in my shows,” he said. “Even when I’m playing a slow waltz song, sometimes there’s crowd-surfing. Most of the time there’s a mosh pit. We haven’t played Mobile that much, so who knows what it’ll be like.”

“I do tell the ladies, don’t wear no open-toed shoes, it can be a rowdy environment.”